The Most Common Causes of Death for an American at Any Age, in Charts

If you've ever wondered what you're most likely to die from at any given time, check out this data visualization posted to Reddit by UCanDoEat.

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The 2010 data is from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (check out their website for an interactive version of the chart), and it provides an interesting look into the most common causes of death for different age brackets.

As the chart shows, transport injuries and intentional injuries (including suicide) are the leading causes of death for young people. Transport injuries caused 36 percent of deaths among people aged 15 to 19 (and 29 percent of deaths among those aged 20 to 24), while intentional injuries were responsible for 30 percent and 32 percent of deaths for those age groups, respectively.

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What that old joke? The majority of deaths for ages 16-23 were usually proceeded by the words 'Hey, watch this!" More...

Mental disorders account for a significant portion of deaths at nearly every age.

Some causes of death left off the chart were posted to Reddit — including war and disaster, digestive diseases, musculoskeletal disorders, malaria, maternal disorders, and nutritional deficiencies — but UCanDoEat did create an annotated version that's a bit easier to read: